Population Displacement in Lithuania in the 20th Century: Experiences, Identities and Legacies offers an account on how two world wars produced a series of population displacements in Lithuania in ...the course of the 20th century.
The inhabitants of Vilnius, the present-day capital of Lithuania, have spoken various languages and professed different religions while living together in relative harmony over the years. The city ...has played a significant role in the history and development of at least three separate cultures—Polish, Lithuanian, and Jewish—and until very recently, no single cultural-linguistic group composed the clear majority of its population. Vilnius between Nations, 1795–2000 is the first study to undertake a balanced assessment of this particularly diverse city. Theodore Weeks examines Vilnius as a physical entity where people lived, worked, and died; as the object of rhetorical struggles between disparate cultures; and as a space where the state attempted to legitimize a specific version of cultural politics through street names, monuments, and urban planning. In investigating these aspects, Weeks avoids promoting any one national narrative of the history of the city, while acknowledging the importance of national cultures and their opposing myths of the city's identity. The story of Vilnius as a multicultural city and the negotiations that allowed several national groups to inhabit a single urban space can provide lessons that are easily applied to other diverse cities. This study will appeal to scholars of Eastern Europe, urban studies, and multiculturalism, as well as general readers interested in the region.
It has often been claimed that Jews have a penchant for capitalism and capitalist economic activity. With this book, Adam Teller challenges that assumption. Examining how Jews achieved their ...extraordinary success within the late feudal economy of the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he shows that economic success did not necessarily come through any innate entrepreneurial skills, but through identifying and exploiting economic niches in the pre-modern economy-in particular, the monopoly on the sale of grain alcohol.
Jewish economic activity was a key factor in the development of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and it greatly enhanced the incomes, and thereby the social and political status, of the noble magnates, including the powerful Radziwiłł family. In turn, with the magnate's backing, Jews were able to leverage their own economic success into high status in estate society. Over time, relations within Jewish society began to change, putting less value on learning and pedigree and more on wealth and connections with the estate owners.
This groundbreaking book exemplifies how the study of Jewish economic history can shed light on a crucial mechanism of Jewish social integration. In the Polish-Lithuanian setting, Jews were simultaneously a despised religious minority and key economic players, with a consequent standing that few could afford to ignore.
In the mid-seventeenth century, Wilno (Vilnius), the second capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was home to Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews, and Tatars, who worshiped in ...Catholic, Uniate, Orthodox, Calvinist, and Lutheran churches, one synagogue, and one mosque. Visitors regularly commented on the relatively peaceful coexistence of this bewildering array of peoples, languages, and faiths. InKith, Kin, and Neighbors, David Frick shows how Wilno's inhabitants navigated and negotiated these differences in their public and private lives.
This remarkable book opens with a walk through the streets of Wilno, offering a look over the royal quartermaster's shoulder as he made his survey of the city's intramural houses in preparation for King Wladyslaw IV's visit in 1636. These surveys (Lustrations) provide concise descriptions of each house within the city walls that, in concert with court and church records, enable Frick to accurately discern Wilno's neighborhoods and human networks, ascertain the extent to which such networks were bounded confessionally and culturally, determine when citizens crossed these boundaries, and conclude which kinds of cross-confessional constellations were more likely than others. These maps provide the backdrops against which the dramas of Wilno lives played out: birth, baptism, education, marriage, separation or divorce, guild membership, poor relief, and death and funeral practices. Perhaps the most complete reconstruction ever written of life in an early modern European city,Kith, Kin, and Neighborssets a new standard for urban history and for work on the religious and communal life of Eastern Europe.
This book deals with the spatial concepts that two erstwhile neighboring cultures, Lithuanian and German, associated with one physical space--a Lithuanian region in Prussia. Covering a period of five ...centuries, it explores how, when, and why these concepts have been developed and transformed regulating the spatial imagination of several generations.
Enemies for a Day Staliunas, Darius
2015, 20150430, 2015-04-10
eBook
This book explores anti-Jewish violence in Russian-ruled Lithuania. It begins by illustrating how widespread anti-Jewish feelings were among the Christian population in 19 th century, focusing on ...blood libel accusations as well as describing the role of modern antisemitism. Secondly, it tries to identify the structural preconditions as well as specific triggers that turned anti-Jewish feelings into collective violence and analyzes the nature of this violence. Lastly, pogroms in Lithuania are compared to anti-Jewish violence in other regions of the Russian Empire and East Galicia.
This is an analysis of 166 original and previously unpublished documents dating from the very first mention of a Gypsy in 1401 up to the year 1 765. These documents range from royal decrees thru ...lawsuits to entries in municipal records. Some were written in Polish but many are in Latin, German or Ruthenian. They tell the story of not only the Gypsies living in Poland, but also of those who now live in Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine. Though Poland has not traditionally had a large Roma population, the author leads the reader through an eventful history of a people living on the margins of contemporary Europe. The historic documents illustrate a marked contrast to present stereotypes and popular media images and shows how the position of Roma/Gypsies shifted gradually from respected, wealthy and partly settled citizens of the early modern times, towards criminalized vagrants of the 18 th century. This is a careful interpretation and re-interpretation of documents pertaining to the Roma's past that will provide an enlightening historical perspective towards the re-evaluation and self-definition of the Romani people in contemporary Europe. Key words 1. Romanies—Poland—History. 2. Romanies—Lithuania (Grand Duchy)—History. 3. Romanies—Poland—History—Sources. 4. Romanies—Lithuania (Grand Duchy) —History—Sources. 5. Poland—Ethnic relations—History. 6. Lithuania (Grand Duchy)—Ethnic relations—History
This book deals with the spatial concepts of Lithuania and other geo-images that either "competed" in the nineteenth century with the term Lithuania or were of a different taxonomic level (Samogitia, ...Prussia's Lithuania, Lithuania Minor, Poland, the Western Region, the Northwest Region, Lita/Lite, Belarus, East Prussia etc.).
